Haunting at Gallagher Mansion: Trick or Treat 2018
by CaptainBrieOnToast
Summary: Cammie is dared by her friends to go into an old abandoned house and spend the night there. It's stupid, rather elementary really. She would never go through with it normally. Maybe walk around, grab an old picture off the wall and show it to them as proof that she had spent the night. But then again, normally she wouldn't run into someone else in the exact same predicament.


Cammie put her hands on her hips, staring at the house before her. It was old with green-brown rotting wood hanging from the window frames. The grass around the house was brown, any trees left in the yard were decaying. It was in quite an awful state. Cammie really ought to complain to the city (or her parents) for letting it get in this state in the first part. There were almost certainly city laws against this.

"You guys realize how dumb this is right?" She asked giving her friends a side eye.

"Hey, that's what happens when you say dare in a game of truth or dare with Bex," Macey said pointedly. She had her hip cocked as well and was decked out in black. She had fishnet stockings on, black lipstick, but her hair was tied up in pigtails with maroon ribbons.

"I don't think it's dumb," Bex protested. "I find it quite genius. Who isn't terrified of a haunted house on Halloween?"

She had her arms crossing her chest, a cocky expression crossing her face, eyes full of mirth. She was dressed in black skinny jeans and a tight button-up turquoise blouse.

"The house isn't haunted, ghosts don't really exist," Liz retorted surely. Cammie was a little surprised she wasn't more frightened. Her small body was posed confidently, her eyes wide with certainty. She had her blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail, and she was wearing a flannel blouse.

"I'm more concerned about the floor collapsing on me," Cammie stated seriously. "Honestly, it's genuinely dangerous in there."

"When have you been the type to back down from a dare?" Bex asked. Cammie could hear the disappointment in her voice and rolled her eyes.

"No, no, I'll do it. I just can't express how completely stupid it is with words," she responded firmly. She glanced down at her feet, noticing a stray shoelace. She bent down and tied the loose ends. "And when will you guys be back in the morning?"

"8 in the morning," Bex responded pointedly.

"Alright," Cammie stated. She rose back up to her feet and brushed off her jeans. "You guys are lucky that my family basically owns this place. After tonight I'm going to start fixing this land up. This place is ridiculously rundown."  
"See you!" Macey called. "You know, if you survive and all."

Cammie threw her hand in the air as a farewell and began her way up the old pathway. Once it had likely been a very beautiful mansion. Grandma spoke often of the elegant parties her family used to throw there… That had been how she met her grandfather after all. Dancing at this old house.

Her grandma had described the pathway to the house as _entrancing_.

Cammie wondered if her family could possibly restore the decaying building. They could replant the trees, weed the grass…

"The yard doesn't count as _inside_ ," Bex called teasingly. Cammie rolled her eyes and looked back at them.

"Yeah, yeah, get out of here!" She responded. She returned her gaze to the house and blew a stray piece of hair out of her line of sight.

She was careful making her way down the sidewalk, noting that any wrong step could lead in her falling to the ground.

The stairs were in about the same state of disrepair as the rest of the yard was. She carefully made her way up the three wooden stairs, noting how some of the nails poked upwards through the wood. She knew that if she stepped on it wrong the wood would crack even more. It would cost a fortune to repair.

She reached the door and barely scanned the porch. With the sun going down it was beginning to get cold outside and she could feel goosebumps creeping over her arms. She hoped that it was warmer inside, but she knew it wouldn't be much at all.

She pushed the door open, making it creak until she let go of it.

She had never been inside Gallagher Mansion, she had only ever seen select pictures and heard tales of it. It was just like she had imagined (just in a larger state of disrepair).

There was a grand staircase in the center of the house that lead up to a second floor. Her grandmother had described the wood as mahogany, polished and covered by a velvet carpet. The carpet was still there, dirty and molded, and the mahogany wood was there as well. It seemed to be in a better state than the last set of stairs that she had come across. She ran her finger over it, careful not to get a splinter. The steps squeaked under her weight but didn't budge much at all.

She was only a few steps up the staircase when she heard a noise echoing through the atrium.

It made her jump in surprise at first, but then she reevaluated herself.

Rats, the house must have rats.

That was no real surprise. Of _course,_ there would be rats. Tentatively, she put her hand on the old rail, making her way up them carefully. With each step, the stairs creaked, making her wince. She was worried the stairs would go out at any moment. Luckily, when she made it to the top floor she was okay.

Once she had reached the top, she heard another soft noise and turned to her right.

The noise was coming from the master bedroom _if_ she remembered her grandmothers' descriptions correctly that is.

She slowly made her way towards the door. It was open, which she found to be odd since almost every other door in the house was closed. She wrinkled her nose and trained her eyes on the ground again, trying not to step on anything that could lead to her falling and seriously hurting herself.

"Hello?" Someone called from inside the room. Cammie's fists balled at her sides and a chill ran through her body. Was someone in there?

She tried to step forward but found that she was frozen solid. She opened her mouth to speak instead but nothing, but a soft whine left her lips.

So much for being brave.

The door creaked a little and a boy peeked around the door. He had wide emerald eyes and tousled dark hair. She couldn't see him very well in the frame of the door, but he had jeans and a t-shirt on. Too modern to be a ghost, then right?

Unless he had died recently, breaking into the house, the floor broke beneath him and…

He pointed at her.

"Wh-Who are y-you?"

He was shaking, but she couldn't really judge him because she was scared as well.

"I-I could ask you the s-same," she managed out. "You're tre-trespassing."

She regained most of the control of her body, she moved her arms and placed her hands on her hips. Her body didn't stop shaking.

"Aren't you trespassing too?" He asked softly. She shook her head slowly.

"No, I own this place-"

The boy took a surprised step back.

"You _are_ a ghost!" He stammered.

"I'm Cameron Ann Morgan, granddaughter of Lee Ann Smith, who was the daughter of Marjorie Ann Gallagher, the mistress of this very house," she replied. His hands fell to his side.

"So… You are a ghost?" He asked. There was a teasing grin on his lips, Cammie knew he was joking, even if he didn't really act like it.

"And you're trespassing."

"I was dared to come here, I'm sure you've heard of a dare before," he said sarcastically. He took a few careful steps towards her and held out his hand. "Zach Goode."

She took his hand. They both stopped shaking the minute their warm fingers came in contact in a handshake. Neither of them was dead, _or_ a ghost.

"Cammie," she responded softly. "And actually, I was dared as well."

"What kind of well-meaning human would send a pretty girl like you into a house like this at night?"

"Bex Baxter. A _brit_."

Zach shivered sympathetically.

"That must be awful, I've actually heard of her before. Didn't she beat some 8th grader our first year in middle school?" He asked softly. She squinted.

"Did you go to Union High School?" Cammie asked in surprise. He smiled and nodded.

"I thought I'd seen you around before," he admitted. "You really are a vision. Joshua Abrams talks about you all the time."

Cammie wrinkled her nose.

"You're friends with Josh?" He laughed.

"No, he tells everyone in our English class, you broke his heart," he continued. It made Cammie smile a little. Not because she was amused that Josh was hurt, but because he actually spoke about her so much that Zach could use it as a reference point.

"Believe it or not we've never really spoken. He's never even asked me out before," she said. "I always assumed he would though, everyone who knows me and him tells me that he'll ask me out… Alas…"

Wind swept through the old house, making Cammie shiver. Zach jumped to action, draping his jacket over her shoulders.

"There you go, there must be an open window up here," he said, peering past her. "Maybe it would be warmer downstairs."

"I wasn't actually going to spend the night," Cammie admitted. "So, I didn't dress very warmly."

"I didn't either," he agreed. "But… Since you're here…"

"It would be rude to leave," Cammie added with a quick nodded. He nodded as well.

"Exactly! We should stay together and keep each other company!"

Cammie nodded vigorously, pulling Zach's coat tighter around her body. She couldn't believe that someone else had been here on the same night… Especially not someone who had gone to her middle school.

"If you went to Union, does that mean you go to Bain High School?" She asked him. He held out his hand to her and she took it, following him back down the stairs.

"Yeah, I'm a senior," he told her.

"I am too!" she said excitedly. "What are the odds that we haven't met until just now?"

"Our graduating class _is_ huge," he stated softly. They made it back to the bottom floor, and all she could do was hum and nod. They fell into a comfortable silence. She peered down one of the halls, and he peered past her as well. He frowned.

"Wonder what's down there," he said softly. Cammie pressed her lips together.

"The kitchen," she responded softly. He squinted at her.

"How do you know?" He asked.

"My grandma has described this place in _intricate_ detail. This is the atrium," she explained. She looked up and gestured to where the chandelier used to hang. "Can you imagine? Replace the old wood, support the old structure. Polish the old chandelier, rewire it, of course, to handle light bulbs and such."

"Strip up the carpet," Zach agreed gesturing to the floor. "Replace the floors with… what do you think? Marble? Strip the peeling wallpaper from the walls."

Cammie grinned at him and led him down the hall to the kitchen.

"We take out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and the one separating the living space too. The dining room will be a step up, but it will look so much more modern with an open floor plan," she continued to say.

"What if we replaced the dining room wall with a full window too? Redid the backyard to have a pool and a koi pond…"

"The kids would spend so much time outside, and we could put a video game room in one of the rooms upstairs for when they wanted to spend time inside," she continued. She could almost picture everything her and Zach were describing.

She could feel the breeze on her cheeks when Zach opened the sliding glass door open, smell the cookies that she had just baked wafting from their oven. She could imagine a cat lounging on the top stair of their grand staircase, scattering when the dog Zach had been calling came bounding down the stairs, darted outside and ran back in, tracking mud all over their polished floors.

It was enough to make her forget that she had never really met Zach before.

"No one else… No one else has ever been able to see it," Cammie whispered. Confusion riddled over Zach's brow and he dropped his hand to where he had been pointing to where their fridge should be.

"Sorry?" He asked.

"Every time I tell people I want to rebuild this home, they just see what it is… A ghost of what it used to be. But you can see what I see," she reiterated. He smiled slowly.

"The house is beautiful. It would be a shame if someone couldn't redo it," he replied. He looked like he wanted to say more about it, but then quickly got distracted. "Okay, but what if we used pillars to hold up the staircase and left _that_ open as well."

Cammie squinted at the staircase.

"It _would_ leave the floor plan _much_ more open. A great entertaining space for guests," she agreed. Zach dropped to the wood floor and pulled a notebook from his pocket, she raised an eyebrow.

"What? You never know when you'll need to write something down."

She laughed and got down next to him. He began to write down their plans, so she sat back on her feet.

"Are we really going to do this?" She asked carefully. His pencil stopped scratching against the paper and he looked at her again.

"Do what?"

"Write the plans to restoring an old house," she replied. "I mean… We hardly know one another."

"I came into this house, met a damn cute girl, and not ten minutes after I first met her began to plan a life together with her, and I don't regret any second of it," Zach responded softly. "Meanwhile, I dated my last girlfriend for _two years_ and could never imagine being married to her. So, I think that I will plan this house with you, take you out for dinner tomorrow and eventually marry you."

Cammie's cheeks were deep red, but she ignored it completely because Zach was right. Despite the fact that they didn't know one another very well at all, and had just met, she felt like he was the one. In fact, she _knew_ that he was the one she wanted to be with for the rest of her life.

He didn't see the ghosts in this house that everyone else saw. He only saw the future behind it.

"Are you proposing to me, Zach Goode?" She asked teasingly. Zach chuckled and began to rummage around on the ground. He found something and then propped himself down on one knee.

"Cameron Ann Morgan," he started. "Will you marry me?"

Cammie laughed and took the thing from his hand. A ring made of a nail that had been left on the ground.

"I do!" She cheered, pretending to be overjoyed. She slid the ring on to her finger and smiled. "Well, I _do_ think I'm going to get a disease from just wearing this."

Zach rolled his eyes and patted the ground next to himself.

"Come on, we have a lot to plan. This house will take ages to fix."

Cammie got back on the ground with him, thoughtlessly playing with the nail ring as they spoke.

Upstairs there would be carpet and two guest bedrooms. They would likely have two children, a boy, and a girl and would share a bathroom in-between their rooms. The finished house would have five bathrooms? Maybe six depending on what they did with the basement.

They would make the path up to the house cobblestone and build a garage with a breezeway leading to it on the right side of the house. The driveway would just be made of concrete though. They would probably make that first. Zach said his mother was a good gardener, so she would be in charge of figuring out what trees and such to plant in the front and backyard. They would have a deck in the backyard as well, and they would build a new fence around the yard for the dog…

Before they could completely polish their plans for the house they began to drift away and when they awoke their friends were laughing at them, for falling asleep in a haunted house lying on one another.

They had assumed the two had been so scared that they had gripped one another for safety.

Zach proceeded to formerly ask Cammie on a date, and they dated for the next two years.

Their dreams for the house didn't diminish even as they dated. Even when they took a break after an argument they couldn't give up on their dream home, their dream _life_.

They were engaged two years into college and were engaged for the next ten years, vowing not to get married until their house was almost done.

When Gallagher Mansion had finally been completely updated Zach and Cammie were out of date, had stable jobs, and were finally, _finally_ ready to have kids.

And it was safe to say, that Cammie never once regretted accepting that stupid dare that Bex had given her all those years ago.

Oh, and if Gallagher Mansion was currently or ever had been haunted it wasn't haunted by ghosts. It was haunted by the dreams of two stupid kids who put their everything into something everyone else was afraid of.

And yes, they _did_ live happily ever after.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Happy Halloween everyone! Got this fanfiction from a Halloween prompt cause I had no clue what to write this year but hey! Turned out okay! Hope you guys have a fun safe night! And don't spend the night in a haunted abandoned house. It's v dangerous, and you probably won't find a husband there, I'm just saying. Anyways! Adios! See you all around!


End file.
